"Rashomon" by Akira Kurosawa numerous characters display dissimilar testimony about a particular event and they all claim to have the story straight. To begin, a wood cutter who remains nameless is in the forest when he comes across a lady's hat, a gentlemen's hat, a piece of rope, an amulet case with red lining and finally a dead body in the thicket. Upon seeing all this he runs immediately to the police to report what he has found. The police do some investigating and find the man who they believed was to blame for the murder, lying on the beach next to a stolen white hoarse. The police bring him in to be question to find that he is the great bandit Tajomaru and that he was not thrown from his stolen hoarse as they had thought but he had just drank bad water and was lying down because he felt ill. As the questioning continues Tajomaru admits to the crime of killing the man and tells his side of the story. He claims that he was resting in the woods when a man, Takchiro and a woman, Musago on a hoarse pass by as the cool breeze blows.
This breeze reveals the Musago's face to Tajomaru and he decides that he has to have her. In efforts to win the women he tricks Takchiro into thinking there is a tomb filled with treasure nearby and Tajomaru offers to sell its goods to Takchiro inexpensively. Takchiro agrees that he will take a look, but on the way Tajomaru attacks and successfully ties him up. This gives Tajomaru the perfect opportunity to pursue the helpless wife they left behind. In doing so Musago pulls out a dagger and fights fiercely with a strong will to keep Tajomaru off of her. Despite her efforts he Tajomaru soon succeeds in rapping her. Then Tajomaru begins to leave when Musago pleads that the two men fight, for she can not take being dishonored by two men. So the men fight and Takchiro is a good fighter but not as good as Tajomaru who kills him in the thicket after their swords crossed 23 times. After this occurs the wife runs off and Tajomaru takes off on the hoarse and sells Takchiro's sword for sake.
Following the testimony of the bandit the police then hear the testimony of the Musago. She starts off by saying that after Tajomaru took advantage of her and she could not put up any sort of fight because she is too weak. After Musago was raped she went to her husband to be consoled and too untie him but what she found was pure hatred f...
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She did not place the body in the thicket simply because it did not fit with the rest of her story. Next, Takchiro lies through out his testimony for several reasons. Foremost he lies about consoling his wife so he doesn't seem like an insensitive jerk. Then he lies about not wanting to fight for her because he then realizes it was pointless since he lost his life and was dishonored. Also he lies about killing himself to make his death seem more honorable, but in reality he was ashamed that a common bandit defeated him. Lastly, the woodcutter's story is almost exactly accurate except for two things. He lies about not seeing the dagger, for in reality he stole the dagger and probably soled it.
He also lies that he saw nothing until hours after the crime had been committed, he does not come forward in fear that the police will realize he tampered with the crime scene and stole the dagger for his personal gain. All the above reasons are why the interrogatories lied throughout their testimonies. In summation the four eye witnesses in the movie "Rashomon" distorted reality in there heads to make themselves look like honest, more honorable people.
The story is about Sixto, a peace-loving Spanish poet. Lino, a local gang member and drug dealer, rapes Sixto’s sister, Mandy. Sixto discusses the situation with his roommate, Willie. If Sixto retaliates, he will lose his peaceful soul and any reason for living. He feels if he does not retaliate, he might as well be dead.
feelings of the soldiers as they were confused as to what to do in the
American society has many binaries, which it currently uses to subjugate people into standard categories like, for example, gender and sex. Even though, society might classify someone, as a man or woman, it does not necessarily mean that how that person’s appearance looks like on the outside, is the same as their inside genetic make-up.
The story gives women of domestic violence courage and strength to get out of an abusive relationship. In one part of the story Delia...
Although it is irrational for any human being to find pleasure in violence, his character make sense of on how he chooses to live his life after a traumatic event. Continuing with the story, a second violent even happens one more time where he is brutally beaten up by Gramm. Through this incident he can express to the reader that he is desperate to feel what he thinks is love tin any shape or form. “Twice more the force of his shoe nearly lifted me off the floor, stripping my mind of everything but this lucid pain. His voice filled the void” (62). He finds comfort in the mistreatment of this boy and can feel his emotional pain with physical pain. The last encounter expresses how he is in such desperate need to feel like Gram does all the beatings and mistreatment in a form of love. “I lifted myself to my knees and from the drawer by the stove, I took the knife my father used to cut tomatoes and onions on the nights he’d tried to make me dinner, crying as he boiled water in my mother’s pots” (69). This line can show that he sees no point in life. The reminiscence of his father 's pain over his mother 's death, caused him to feel such emotions and unhappiness with his life. At the very end he finally cries, it is like he has accepted that his parents have died and can now feel the pain without
Eyewitness testimonies are also valued unique factors they can bring to criminal investigations. Nevertheless, an eyewitness testimony can also raise several factors that threaten its credibility, especially for those who haven’t had prior training in assessing witness reliability. It has been suggested, for instance, that jurors only have their common sense as their guides when their witnesses have strenuous claims (Schechel et al., 2006, p.178).
In the novel Sula, by Toni Morrison we follow the life of Sula Peace through out her childhood in the twenties until her death in 1941. The novel surrounds the black community in Medallion, specifically "the bottom". By reading the story of Sula’s life, and the life of the community in the bottom, Morrison shows us the important ways in which families and communities can shape a child’s identity. Sula not only portrays the way children are shaped, but also the way that a community receives an adult who challenges the very environment that molded them. Sula’s actions and much of her personality is a direct result of her childhood in the bottom. Sula’s identity contains many elements of a strong, independent feminist character. However, the people in Medallion do not see Sula in a positive light. When she returns to Medallion as an adult Sula is seen as evil and regarded with much fear. The reason Sula outcast from the community is specifically due to the fact that she is a woman who refuses to contain herself in the social norms set up for the town. She refuses to marry and frequently sleeps around. The characters that exist around Sula serve as a point to compare the different ways the community treats those who are different. Specifically the way the characters, Shadrack and Hannah are treated by the community can be compared to the way the community treats Sula. In one way or another, Sula, Shadrack, and Hannah are outcast from the community in the bottom.
... sins, but she can’t take back what she did so she will forever have blood on her hands. This guilt and all of the lies she has told is giving her true trepidation and in the end she decided to end her terror by taking her life.
Memory has several flaws which affect reliability a person only remembers what they wish to remember we have short term memory and long term most is only remembered for a roughly 15 to 20 seconds or brain store things differently in different places. Remembering a face that is not as clear as one actually viewed, the human mind has a tendency for memories to be constructed so that missing information is supplied from our past or outside sources TV is a big one that makes faulty memories of human beings. Newspaper something we read could be triggered at the time. Other witnesses the person may have heard talking or describing could alter the mind. The human mind uses other from memories to interpret information and can distort the memory of the situation in memory. Even colors are remembered as brighter than they truly are. Maybe eyewitness can get right do you think? How about the criminal procedures they cannot be wrong or could
For example, the old man that lived beneath the boy and his father testified that he heard a fight between the boy and the father and heard the boy yell, “I’m gonna kill you,” along with a body hitting the ground, and then claims that he saw the boy running down the stairs. With this information, along with other powerful eyewitness testimonies, all but one of the jury members believed this boy was guilty. The power of eyewitness testimony is also shown in Loftus’s (1974) study. In this study, Loftus (1974) found that those who claimed to “see” something were usually believed even when their testimony is pointless. She discovered in her study that only 18 percent of people convicted if there was no eyewitness testimony, 72 percent of people convicted when someone declared, “That’s the one!”, and even when the witness only had 20/400 vision and was not wearing glasses and claimed “That’s the one!”, 68 percent of people still convicted the person. This proves that in 12 Angry Men and Loftus (1974) study, eyewitness testimony is very powerful and influential in one’s decision to convict a
Set against the backdrop of post-WWII reservation life, the struggles of the Laguna Pueblo culture to maintain its identity while adjusting to the realities of modern day life are even more pronounced in Ceremony. Silko uses a wide range of characters in order to give a voice to as many representatives of her tribe as possible. The main character, Tayo, is the person with whom the reader is more than likely to relate. The story opens with him reliving various phases of his life in flashbacks, and through them, the reader shares his inability to discern reality from delusion, past from present and right from wrong. His days are clouded by his post-war sickness, guilt for being the one to survive while his cousin Rocky is slain, and his inability to cope neither with life on the reservation or in the outside world. He is one of several representations of the beginnings of the Laguna Pueblo youth interacting with modern American culture.
The narrator becomes increasingly envious of her brother’s social status. Anxious to get back, she tricks Nonso to climb up a tree and scares him, causing him to fall to his death. She then lies to her mother, explaining that her grandmother had tricked Nonso and caused him to fall to his death. As a result, her parents divorce and her mother prohibits her from visiting her grandmother. In the end of her story, she meets Dozie and realizes that he kept her secret because he cares more about her than about his own wants.
It is a story that provides the ultimate explanation of how two different people who are witnesses to a crime give completely different psychological recollections of the same event. The author reminds us that truth depends on the telling. Someone must step forward and tell that truth.
The novel Tsotsi, by Athol Fugard, is a story of redemption and reconciliation, facing the past, and confronts the core elements of human nature. The character going through this journey, who the novel is named after, is a young man who is part of the lowest level of society in a poor shanty town in South Africa. Tsotsi is a thug, someone who kills for money and suffers no remorse. But he starts changing when circumstance finds him in possession of a baby, which acts as a catalyst in his life. A chain of events leads him to regain memories of his childhood and discover why he is the way he is. The novel sets parameters of being “human” and brings these to the consideration of the reader. The reader’s limits of redemption are challenged as Tsotsi comes from a life lacking what the novel suggests are base human emotions.